Temporary protection for ends of tubes and the like has heretofore been proposed, illustrative of which are the disclosures of U.S. Pat. No. 2,580,762 granted to J. R. Grenier et al on Jan. 1, 1952 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,574,312 granted to Joseph T. Miller Apr. 13, 1971.
Other proposals have been made for protecting exposed ends of tubular members such as electrical cable, illustrative of which are the proposals of U.S. Pat. No. 3,847,183 which was granted to Vincent E. Meyer on Nov. 12, 1974.
Still other proposals have been made for temporary closing of tubular members to facilitate testing for piping system integrity. Illustrative of such are the proposals of U.S. Pat. No. 3,807,457 granted to Duane D. Logsdon on Apr. 30, 1974.
Although such proposals have addressed selected problems encountered in handling, installing and testing tubular members, there yet have remain unresolved drawbacks to their use. Thus, for example, among other problems, there have continued to be problems with protecting and marking mating ends of tubular connectors when such connectors are in their unconnected conditions. Accordingly, there has continued to be a need for inexpensively identifying and protecting such mating ends.